Sunni leader open to coalition government (AP) Updated: 2005-12-17 10:00

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A leading
Sunni politician said Friday his party would be open to an alliance with secular
Shiites and Kurds to form a coalition government to run the country once the
results are in from this week's parliamentary elections.

"We will not accept the exclusion of any segment of the Iraqi people unless
they themselves don't want to participate," said Adan al-Dulaimi, a former
Islamic studies professor who heads a Sunni Arab bloc that is now expected to
have power in parliament.

U.S. officials view al-Dulaimi, who heads an alliance called the Iraqi
Accordance Front, as a possible intermediary who could persuade some Sunni-led
insurgent groups in restive Anbar province to join the political process after
boycotting previous votes.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Al-Dulaimi predicted that Shiite
religious parties would be unable to form a government ¡ª even though they are
widely expected to take the largest number of seats.

That would open the door to a coalition of Sunnis, secular Shiites and Kurds,
al-Dulaimi said.

"We will not accept the exclusion of any segment of the Iraqi people unless
they themselves don't want to participate," he said.

However, al-Dulaimi's prediction that the Shiites would be unable to form a
government is by no means a certainty. Shiites account for about 60 percent of
the country's 27 million people, and turnout in the Shiite heartland of southern
and central Iraq was reported high.

Under the newly ratified constitution, the party with the biggest number of
seats gets first crack at trying to form a government than can win parliament's
endorsement. That is likely to be the coalition of Shiite religious parties that
dominate the outgoing government.

Still, a government with strong Sunni Arab representation could help defuse
the Sunni-dominated insurgency and allow the United States and its coalition
partners to begin removing troops next year.

On Friday, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top U.S. commander, told Pentagon
reporters in a video teleconference that he will make recommendations in the
next few weeks about troop withdrawals from Iraq.

But Casey sought to dampen expectation that a successful election alone would
end the insurgency and predicted insurgents may escalate their attacks to
demonstrate they "are still strong and a factor to be reckoned with."

"We should not expect the insurgency to just go away because of yesterday's
great success," Casey said. "But we should expect it to be gradually weakened
and reduced as more and more Iraqis adopt the political process and the root
causes of the insurgency are addressed by the new Iraqi government and by the
coalition."

In an Internet statement Friday, the Islamic Army in Iraq, a major insurgent
group, said it was responsible for the absence of widespread election violence
because it wanted to avoid harming Sunni Arab voters.

"We knew Sunnis would participate in this game (because) most were forced to
through the oppression, torture and destruction and suffering they receive from
the slaves of the Cross (the Americans) and the Shiites," said the statement,
which could not be immediately verified.

The statement added that the jihadist group did not believe in democracy,
only God.

Also Friday, the U.S. military said Iraqi authorities have issued an arrest
warrant for Mullah Halgurd Al-Khabir, the "prime suspect" in the August 2003
bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad that killed 22 people. The statement
identified al-Khabir as the Baghdad area commander for the Islamic militant
Ansar al-Sunnah Army, which has ties to al-Qaida in Iraq.

Before Thursday's election, Shiite religious politicians said they expected
to win up to 120 seats ¡ª down 26 from their current level. The Shiites and Kurds
won a disproportionate number of seats in the January ballot because so many
Sunnis boycotted the election. This time, Sunnis turned out in large numbers.